Like the best-performing organizations in sport, Aon builds on a legacy of success through hard work, preparation and world-leading talent. Our golf partnerships provide a unique global platform for us to authentically story tell at scale and connect with our target audience around one of their passion points.
The Aon Risk Reward Challenge is a unique, season-long competition across the PGA TOUR and LPGA Tour that highlights golf’s best strategic decision makers. Through this challenge we are able to draw parallels between decisions made on the course and in business. Throughout the season, players from both Tours compete on golf’s toughest holes. At the end of the regular season, the competition’s top performers each take home the Aon Trophy and an EQUAL $1M prize, making this challenge one of the most equitable in all of professional sports.
An extension of the challenge, our Aon Ambassador program consists of an elite and diverse roster of individuals across the PGA TOUR and LPGA Tour — assembled in the hopes of increasing awareness of the brand, the challenge and our overall presence in the golf space. We set out to leverage the power and profiles of our Aon Ambassadors to help diversify the type of content we create surrounding the challenge. With that objective in mind, our ‘Course Insight Guides’ were born. The digital series features our ambassadors offering their personal insights on the Tour’s most strategically challenging holes, providing fans with an inside look at how the pros approach these courses.
With the success of our Aon Risk Reward Challenge hole overviews (custom vignettes that highlight the challenges and decisions players will face week in and week out on Tour) we saw a unique opportunity to take things a step further — leveraging our Aon Ambassador roster to deliver hole insights directly to fans in a video series to go live across Aon, partner and ambassador social channels.
In today’s digital age, with the advent of social media allowing fans direct access to athletes’ platforms, what better way to communicate with your audience than one-on-one? While our other Aon Risk Reward Challenge content had been serving its purpose of highlighting our challenge holes and the decisions that players would face on them, we hadn’t yet been able to incorporate a more personal approach. Our Course Insight Guides filled that void. With our ambassadors sharing their specific decision-making processes, we were able to create a feeling of exclusivity for our target audience, — ‘pulling back the curtain’ in a sense and giving them access to information fans don’t typically get to see.
In building the Aon Ambassador program, we looked for individuals from both the PGA TOUR and LPGA Tour whose approach to the game aligned closely with the firm, ensuring their ability to communicate authentically with our target audience. The 2022 roster consisted of Tony Finau, Xander Schauffele, Minjee Lee, Carlota Ciganda, Lizette Salas, Elizabeth Szokol, Jim “Bones” Mackay and Jim Nantz. This way of thinking carried over into our Course Insight Guides — wanting to ensure that we were putting out the most authentic and engaging product as possible. With that, we were incredibly strategic in selecting which ambassadors should discuss which holes for these videos — taking into consideration a variety of factors including how well they’ve played the hole historically, if they’ve won at that tournament in the past, etc. For example, Minjee Lee narrated the Course Insight Guide for The Evian Championship after winning the tournament in 2021. The result is a natural fit that’s apparent for audiences and makes these videos unique.
Harnessing this authenticity and the power of the ambassadors’ personal following, we amplified these videos across Aon-owned social pages, such as Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn to reach our curated audience of clients, prospects, colleagues and prospective talent. In addition, we amplified content across partner social channels such as PGA TOUR, LPGA Tour, Golf Digest and ambassador platforms. This approach enabled us to increase viewership exponentially, reaching an entirely new audience that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to.
In creating the Aon Ambassador program, choosing individuals whose approach to the game aligned with the challenge concept enabled us to communicate authentically and effectively with our target audience. By pulling back the curtain and offering exclusive insights directly from the player and caddie perspective, we hoped to not only let fans in on the ambassadors’ secrets to success, but also deliver a deeper understanding of Aon’s capabilities through this lens of decision making in golf. Going the extra mile to strategically pair ambassadors with specific holes based on their approach to the game and historical play created an added layer of authenticity that resonated with fans.
Please find 2022 highlights below:
Course Insight Guides generated at least 10.46M impressions and 787k video views across 3 media partner social platforms (Golf Digest, Golf TV and Sky Sports)
The two most effective posts from 2022 showcased the Genesis Scottish Open (PGA TOUR) and the Evian Championship (LPGA Tour)
The Genesis Scottish Open post featuring PGA TOUR player Xander Schauffele drove the highest CTR and was the most efficient post of the series, costing just $1.83 per click
The Evian Championship post featuring LPGA Tour player Minjee Lee drove the most impressions (44% of all Course Insight Guide dark social impressions) and costed $1.91 per thousand impressions (The industry benchmark is $11)
The Evian Championship post on Golf Digest drove the most total clicks, the most video views and the most engagements with a total of 3M impressions and 126k video views
